Striking Change in Bedford-Stuyvesant as the White Population Soars

The intersection of Greene and Classon Avenues, above, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, which is becoming increasingly white.Credit
Andrea Morales/The New York Times

Mark Dunlea and his wife, Judith A. Enck, moved to Brooklyn from upstate New York two years ago. Last March, they breached the blurry Clinton Hill border to buy an apartment in a four-story condominium that had replaced an abandoned warehouse in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

The couple say they do not feel like pioneers in the gentrification of Bedford-Stuyvesant, the neighborhood in central Brooklyn that traces its African-American roots to the early 19th century and has been the borough’s black cultural capital for decades.

“We just feel so lucky to be in such a vibrant neighborhood,” Ms. Enck said. Mr. Dunlea, the director of the Hunger Action Network of New York State, added, “To us, if you’re going to move to New York City, one of the benefits is a really diverse neighborhood.”

Overshadowed by Harlem’s racial metamorphosis since 2000, an even more striking evolution has occurred in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Over all, the neighborhood is now barely 60 percent black — down from 75 percent a decade ago. But in the older Bedford section west of Throop Avenue, according to the 2010 census, blacks have recently become a minority of the population for the first time in 50 years.

“Both the fall of the crime rate and the improvement of the subway were conditions that made this neighborhood more attractive to people who might not have considered living there in the past,” said John H. Mollenkopf, director of the Center for Urban Research at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Arthur Kell, 54, a jazz musician and composer who is white and who bought a brownstone in Bedford with two friends five years ago, said, “It seems to be similar to what I saw happen in Fort Greene starting in 1997.”

In the past decade, the black population of Bedford dropped to 34,000 from 40,000, or to 49 percent from 69 percent. Meanwhile, the number of whites grew to more than 18,000, up from just over 2,000, or to 26 percent, up from 4 percent.

From 2000 to 2010, the white population soared 633 percent — the biggest percentage increase of any major racial or ethnic group in any New York City neighborhood. In Central Harlem, meanwhile, the number of whites rose 400 percent, increasing their share of the population to 10 percent, up from 2 percent.

“When I moved here 10 years ago, I was the first white guy on the block,” said Ryan McCullough, 48, a sculptor, who lives off Bedford Avenue with his wife and rents out the top two floors of his three-story brownstone to four tenants. Now, he said, nearly half of the residents on his street are white.

“In the 2010 census, the first thing we noticed was how the concentrations in many traditional black and white areas dropped off across so many blocks,” said Steven Romalewski, director of the mapping service of the Center for Urban Research at CUNY’s Graduate Center, which analyzed the census results block by block.

In Brooklyn, he said, “you can see how the white population, for example, is shifting eastward into traditionally black areas, while blacks are also moving eastward, especially to Flatlands and Canarsie.”

In Clinton Hill, Fort Greene and Williamsburg, “the prices are so astronomically high that obviously the next place to go to is Bedford-Stuyvesant or Bushwick,” said Henry L. Butler, the chairman of Community Board 3 in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Photo

Mark Dunlea recently moved from upstate New York to the neighborhood, which he called “really diverse.”Credit
Andrea Morales/The New York Times

“You’re getting new money, new people, you get different types of services and stores, and you get more police protection,” he said. “Homeowners are doing well, but if you’re a renter, those prices have gone up also and that has pushed some people into moving out.”

Michael Guerra, executive vice president of Prudential Douglas Elliman and its Brooklyn sales director, said the neighborhood was attracting students from the nearby Pratt Institute, as well as “couples and singles who are looking for more value and a segment of pioneers who think there’s a long-term upside.”

The spillover from more expensive neighborhoods, like Williamsburg, Fort Greene and Clinton Hill, has produced a striking metamorphosis in relatively short order.

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On Greene Avenue, down the block from Mr. Dunlea and Ms. Enck, a four-family town house is listed at $1.5 million. An area that epitomized racial tension around a pizza parlor in Spike Lee’s 1989 film “Do the Right Thing” is now home to several Zagat-rated restaurants and to Nice (as in France) Pizza, which features a “La Baltique” pie topped with smoked salmon and heavy cream ($20 for the 16-inch version).

A section of Bedford is moving toward being designated a historic district in the neighborhood that, 30 years ago, Billy Joel crooned he might “be crazy” to walk through alone.

Tremaine Wright, 38, a lawyer who opened Common Grounds, an upscale coffeehouse on Tompkins Avenue four years ago and lives nearby in the house her grandfather bought in the 1940s, says the resurgence of businesses and other services has also attracted younger blacks who might otherwise have moved away.

“I have a solid peer group here,” said Ms. Wright, who is black. “The real gentrification is people staying instead of leaving.”

The extent of racial integration, so far, has been mixed in the more rapidly changing Bedford section, which the city’s Planning Department defines roughly as bounded by Throop, Classon and Flushing Avenues and Fulton Street.

“Some white residents are involved in local block associations and community-based advocacy groups,” said John L. Flateau, a professor of public administration at Medgar Evers College. “But there are also a number of white families and single hipsters moving into Bed-Stuy, as renters and owners, who seem to be disconnected from, unaware of, and oblivious to Bed-Stuy’s rich, historical legacy of social capital, community networks and its politics.”

Professor Flateau, who is black and lives in the area, said whites represented “a vibrant part of a new entrepreneurial class” and added: “My concern is the social cohesion gap created by the home sellers and evacuees and stubbornly slow immersion and social integration by the new urban pioneers.

“Some home sellers were one step shy of foreclosure; others are retirees, heading back ‘down South.’ Still others cannot manage New York’s high cost of living, high black unemployment, very tight, high-skills job market, etc. In any event, this constitutes a major drain on Bed-Stuy’s social and economic capital.”

Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries, who represents the area, said “some African-American homeowners have sold their houses and returned down South with the ability to improve their quality of life from a space standpoint or are moving to other parts of Brooklyn and to the suburbs.”

“Others,” he continued, “have remained in Bedford-Stuyvesant, but have rented parts of their home out to newcomers, both black and white, to benefit from the increased market.” (The number of renters since 2000 has increased at a higher rate than the number of owners.)

Still, he said, “the area has undergone dramatic racial and socio-economic change, but at its core Bedford-Stuyvesant remains Bedford-Stuyvesant with a proud history and tradition infused with African-American culture.”

A version of this article appears in print on August 5, 2011, on Page A19 of the New York edition with the headline: A Striking Evolution in Bedford-Stuyvesant as the White Population Soars. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe